I spent a couple of hours today experimenting with the new breed of online video editing websites. I figured this would be a good way for me to post the video clips I’ve been taking with my Nokia N-90 smart phone.

Alas, the experience wasn’t what I had hoped for. (Disclaimer: I know — and like — the people who run all three of these sites.)

My first stop was at VideoEgg. Their partnership with TypePad — the home of all three of my blogs — makes them a perfect candidate. Unfortunately, my video interview clocked in at 6 minutes 30 seconds, and VideoEgg still imposes a 5-minute maximum for all videos. I would have been happy to cut it down to 5 minutes, but couldn’t upload the video in the first place to do so.

Next, I returned to a site I like a lot: Eyespot. This week they released version 2.2 of the online software, with great options such as stats, comments, tags, ratings, embedded codes, hi-res downloads, contextual browsing and the like.

I uploaded my video successfully. I wanted to trim a few seconds just from the beginning and the end, but didn’t at first glance see the option for trimming a clip. (It’s there, but I missed it.) Instead, I opted for beginning and ending transitions and hit mix. The average time for others today was 23 seconds. Mine was a longer video, but after 15 minutes, I just gave up.

On to Jumpcut. Yahoo! bought them a few months ago, and I could see why. Nice, simple interface (as with the other two), and commands (like Slice and Delete) that were plain and simple. I successfully trimmed the video, but couldn’t figure out how to add a title to the beginning of the clip (my original attempt overlaid the title over the entire clip, blackening it out).

I published the final work, and a few seconds later, voila! There’s my interview with Jonna Anderson. (See above.) I intensely dislike the fact that the site gives the media creator no option to let users download the video instead of just stream it. It’s the YouTube phenomenon.

I’ll probably return and use all three sites at various times. But not for my everyday videoblogging. I’ll continue to use Ourmedia to host my videos.